Wheat
Grain markets this week have been largely flat, bouncing between £187 and £190 on November futures. It would appear any fresh news comes with an equal positive and negative to balance itself back out again. There is still a huge abundance of cheap Russian and Ukrainian grain flooding the Eastern Europe market. The ban which the EU had put on imports of this grain into Poland, Slovakia and Hungry in order to protect their grain markets had expired this week and the EU said they had no plans to extend it, but these countries individually all came to the table to do this independently instead.
The WASDE report last week lowered global wheat supplies again but corn figures are still very healthy with the prospect of a large Brazilian crop to follow next year as well.
Looking ahead now to the Southern Hemisphere harvest, Australia is currently experiencing a spring heatwave which is not helping crop development but there is still time for this to rectify pre harvest.
Closer to home, the UK continues to have quality issues, forcing the premium for those soft wheats higher, pulling feed wheat with it. Currently the UK is still not competitive for export but as farmers seem reluctant sellers, this has not been an issue, allowing prices to stay where they are for now.
Soya
Soya prices continue to remain stubborn, with all market sentiment pointing towards lower prices but physical prices remaining firm. US harvest is now in full swing with quality data coming in all the time. The WASDE report was again better than expected for yields despite the dry weather experienced and we still have the looming huge South American crop due to be planted to carry into next year.
Organic
Organic grain has just moved up slightly from the bottom we have been trading at over the past few weeks as expected. There are reservations about how easy shipping will be in this area now that the safety net of the grain corridor has been removed.
Some Indian sources of soya are beginning to get their certification through and plan shipments to the UK for the later part of the year but premiums are still quite high and do not quite tip the favour back to Indian now that most mills have had to make the choice to switch to Chinese.
Regards,
Kay Johnson & Martin Humphrey
